by Kay Hooper
“Life’s like that.”
His humorous, slightly pained expression became suddenly intent as he looked at her, and Kelsey came back to her and framed her face almost completely in one large hand. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said quietly, “but it must have been something terrific.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard and smiled up at him, her heart aching. “I’m glad you think so. Just don’t brood about us anymore, all right?”
“I can’t help it.” His fingers were moving, stroking her face almost compulsively. “I want to stay with you. I want to sleep with you and watch you in the morning. I want to see you smile and hear you laugh. I want to be with you.”
It was not something she could help him with, and Elizabeth knew it. Only Kelsey could decide if she fit into his future. She could love him and wait for him to work his way through what he was feeling. And she was very aware that he could decide, in the end, to leave her … because he had to. Because that elusive part—or parts—of him would be unable to be content in her settled life.
Thinking of that now, as she had several times before, she said slowly, “There’s something I want you to know, Kelsey. I wasn’t lying when I said that if you left me, I’d understand. I’d understand because you were right when you said earlier that I made myself fit here. I was very young and I didn’t really have a choice, but it was a painful struggle. I know what you’re feeling … if only in a small way. I know how hard it is to rein something wild. Even now, after ten years, I have to let it out sometimes.
“But you … You’ve been in a dangerous business for fifteen years, nearly half your life, and what you’ve learned to be in that life isn’t something you can just walk away from and dismiss. It’s a part of you, a very strong part. A part I love. Don’t change. Don’t change for me or anyone else.”
With difficulty, he said, “And if what I am drives me away from you?” Something he had reluctantly already faced, though it hurt terribly. The possibility that he might one day have to leave her.
“Then you can’t let that tear you apart,” she said steadily. “You said—you didn’t want to be remembered as the man who tore my life apart. You won’t be, no matter what. I love you too much for that to happen. But there’s something I won’t be remembered as, Kelsey. I won’t be remembered as the woman who tore you apart.”
After a moment of gazing into her determined eyes, he lowered his head and kissed her gently. “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” he said huskily. “Just don’t let me hurt you.” It was a rough, strained plea.
She touched his cheek fleetingly and then turned toward the stairs. What could she say to that? Nothing. “It’s getting late; it’ll be dark soon. Let’s get your shoe out of the muck and go up to the house.”
Her words were light, and ten years of controlling a tendency to wildness kept her expression serene. Elizabeth knew she would hang on to that control as long as necessary. She would not, for one instant, show him the ache she felt. He would never leave her willingly; she felt that and was warmed by it. He would fight his own nature to stay with her, if she let him. But she wasn’t willing to let that happen.
If he came to terms with himself and discovered that he loved her too much to leave her, and if he emerged from that struggle whole and healed, she would be happier than ever before in her life.
But if he found, in the end, that what he needed she couldn’t give him, she would wave good-bye and provide a place here he could come back to if he wanted. Here in her tame life. And she’d never let him see the scrapbook full of memories she was already lovingly putting together in her mind.
She wouldn’t be remembered as the woman who tore Kelsey apart.
He carried her over the threshold. He also carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, and except for a couple of forays down to the kitchen to stave off starvation, they spent the entire night in bed together.
Kelsey awoke in the hours before dawn, vaguely aware that this particular time seemed to be his own personal witching hour; it seemed that just before dawn he was always facing things he would rather have avoided. But he woke to find himself holding Elizabeth tightly and possessively, and even though she slept deeply and was obviously undisturbed by the strength of his embrace, he forced his arms to relax a little.
And, because he had to, because he knew despite her control that Elizabeth did indeed need a promise from him, he faced himself once more. He allowed himself to remember the memories of fifteen years, beginning with his father’s death. And, like still photographs flipping rapidly through his mind, a complete picture of those years emerged.
He remembered the bad things, of course. Friends lost, assignments that had snowballed beyond his or anyone’s control and had gone haywire. Harried interludes of time spent in dangerous places doing dangerous things. Countless brushes with death. Roles assumed easily at need and just as easily discarded. The face of every criminal he had helped to capture, and some who were killed.
He remembered crowded, dangerous cities and vast, lonely oceans and breathtakingly beautiful tropical islands. He remembered glittering parties and silent stakeouts and cold jails. He remembered partners who had saved his ass. He remembered too many eleventh-hour rescues, too little sleep, too many guns. Food that tasted of cardboard eaten hastily in cars or dark motel rooms or on the run. Hours spent hunched over a computer keyboard looking for any single tiny item of information required to topple some criminal kingpin.
And … no real regrets.
He regretted lives lost, and there had been times that, looking back now, he regretted he had not acted more quickly or more effectively. But for what he had done with his life, he had no real regrets.
And now?
Kelsey held this warm, vital woman in his arms, thinking of her falcon’s eyes and practiced control, of the tenderness and love in her that could explode into a passion so total it could—and did—steal his breath and stop his heart.
“I won’t be remembered as the woman who tore you apart.”
Something inside him shuddered, swaying on an uncertain foundation.
It was a long time before he slept again.
“Do you think it will work?” Raven asked quietly, her voice so low that only her husband heard.
Sitting beside her in the efficiently soundproofed and decidedly luxurious cabin of one of the company Lear jets, Josh took her hand and didn’t answer for a moment. His tumultuous courtship of Raven having altered his life in many ways, he no longer felt the need to pilot himself whenever he flew somewhere; though he was still habitually cautious as most wealthy men had learned to be, his obsession with keeping control of the smallest details of his life was virtually a thing of the past.
“You’d have a better idea of that than I would, darling,” he reminded her at last.
Raven sighed, her worry about Kelsey increasing even as the miles between them and Pinnacle lessened. “I told you what Derek said when he called me. Kelsey’s right on the edge this time; he may not be up to playing another role.”
“I could go in with Zach,” Josh noted after a moment in a very neutral voice.
Her eyes were grave, her smile understanding, but Raven shook her head. “On the edge or not, Kelsey would never allow that to happen. If something went wrong, you’d be worth more to the major than anything or anyone else he could get his hands on. You know that, Josh.”
Josh knew, but he grimaced faintly. “I guess. Well, maybe Kelsey’s partner can go in.”
“Derek’s good,” Raven acknowledged. “But he doesn’t have Kelsey’s chameleon nature. Derek is Derek—no matter where he is or what he’s doing, he’s always the same. Kelsey is whoever he wants to be.”
“Which is why he’s on the edge this time?”
“That’s what Derek thinks, and I agree. I knew it would happen someday. For the first time in fifteen years, someone important to him has looked Kelsey in the eye and asked who he is—and after so long, he isn’t sure.”
; “It makes sense.” After a moment of silence, Josh said. “What is his other name?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at her. “Really? And you worked with him for five years?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled a little. “Hey, it’s a secretive business, remember? You learn early not to ask too many questions.”
Josh sighed and glanced toward the rear of the plane, where Zach and Teddy were deep in conversation. Then he looked back at his lovely wife and smiled, his normally rather hard blue eyes softened. Soon they were glowing, as always when they focused on her. “Well, whoever he is, we’ll help Kelsey. We all owe him a hell of a lot. I know he doesn’t care about that, but I’m glad it’s our turn to back him up.”
“If we can,” Raven reminded.
“Oh, we can. It only remains to be seen how much we can, and how well we can.”
Hagen, who considered himself a veritable maestro with all matters secretive, clasped his pudgy hands together over his straining paunch and stared broodingly at his spotless desk. This situation, he decided silently, had all the earmarks of a truly nasty mess.
The military’s mess, of course, and he had expressed all the proper pious sympathy when he had called General Ramsey to commiserate. Being Hagen, a smile creased his cherubic face when he thought about that satisfying call; he and the military were more often than not at loggerheads, and it was enjoyable to see them squirm.
Still. It was a serious matter, a potentially deadly one, and quite a number of lives were at risk. That sobered him.
It probably wouldn’t have surprised Josh much that Hagen knew much more about the matter than anyone—including Rafferty and Sarah—had seen fit to tell him.
He had his sources, after all.
That Hagen had decided privately not to send anyone else into Pinnacle despite the nuclear threat was primarily due to his knowledge and understanding of all the persons already present or en route to Pinnacle.
Regretfully, he acknowledged the fact that he was unlikely to be able to utilize the talents of Long and his men on any future problems; though Sarah Lewis still worked for his agency, the only real tie remaining between that talented and inventive group of extraordinary people and his agency—was Kelsey.
And the very fact that Kelsey had not reported in, nor gone through official channels for the information he had required told Hagen more than his agent would have liked. Told Hagen, in fact, a great deal.
Really, Hagen thought vaguely, he should turn his talents toward matchmaking on a grand scale. He seemed to be good at it.
Dammit.
Elizabeth was rather fascinated by Kelsey’s elusive partner, introduced to her simply as Derek. A big man like Kelsey, he was blond and startlingly handsome with lazy eyes and a faintly drawling voice. He had arrived late in the morning after being called by Kelsey, and they were all three sitting in the living room with coffee, planning.
And Derek fascinated Elizabeth because she had the unnerved feeling that nothing she or anybody else could ever say or do would surprise him. There was something in those lazy eyes that was older than time, infinitely tolerant, and faintly amused.
“Sounds right to me,” he said now as Kelsey finished explaining the conclusions he had come to, lighting a cigarette.
“Mallory’s on his way over here,” Kelsey told him. “Elizabeth called him.”
Derek cocked an eyebrow. “Going to deck him?”
Elizabeth giggled despite herself.
Kelsey frowned at both of them, but his eyes were bright. “No, I’m not going to deck him. Unless he provokes me,” he added as an afterthought.
“The way you feel about him,” Derek murmured, studying the glowing end of his cigarette, “a polite good morning would provoke you.”
Kelsey ignored that. Pointedly. “I want to know why in hell we haven’t heard from Raven. That isn’t like her.”
“I imagine we could call the jet.”
“Jet? What jet?”
“Company jet. A Lear, I think. Hard to know which one they’d take, though. There are—what?—six or so in Long’s fleet?”
After a moment of silence, Kelsey sighed. “Do you know for sure they’re coming down here, or just guessing?”
“Calling it an educated guess. I know Raven, and from what I’ve heard of her husband and that crew of his, they wouldn’t just offer information or advice. They’d come down here suited up and ready to get in the game.”
“They wouldn’t all come,” Kelsey protested.
“All who?” Elizabeth asked, bewildered.
There was amusement in his eyes, but Kelsey sighed in a long-suffering manner. “Once upon a time, I had a partner named Raven. She was good, damned good. But one night she accidentally knocked a man flat on his back in a hotel hallway, which rattled him so much that he proposed to her.”
“Marriage?” Elizabeth asked, smiling.
“Orange blossoms and all. Unfortunately, Raven was in deep cover working an assignment, and I was on the sidelines providing backup. The man, to the consternation of us all, turned out to be Joshua Long. Heard of him?”
“Who hasn’t.” Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I suppose he didn’t just dismiss her from his life?”
“Hardly. When she gave him the slip—being undercover and in a rather dangerous position—he promptly called out his bloodhounds. A lawyer, an ex-marine security chief, and an ex-cop turned investigator.” He reflected broodingly. “Things got kind of crazy after that. Anyway, at some point our esteemed boss Hagen caught them in a weak moment and deviously swore all four of them in as federal agents, and has spent the past year and more drafting them one by one to help him out.”
“Is that legal?” she wondered.
“It isn’t ethical,” Derek murmured, blowing a smoke ring and studying it critically.
“They don’t care,” Kelsey told Elizabeth. “It’s a bit odd in this day and age, but all four of those men are dragon slayers. Zach’s the only one of them who really looks the part, but all four swing a mean sword.”
“You left out the best part of the story,” Derek complained mildly.
Kelsey gave his partner a suspicious look. “And what part did I leave out?”
“Matrimony.” Derek looked at Elizabeth and said lazily, “Each of those men emerged from his respective assignment with a wife in tow. I understand Hagen is beginning to consider himself quite a matchmaker.”
“I thought you didn’t know the story!” Kelsey said accusingly.
“A little bird must have told me.”
“And I can guess her name, I suppose.”
Elizabeth decided not to comment on that aspect of the story. “They sound very unusual. What about the women?”
Kelsey returned his attention to her, feeling his body and senses react just to looking at her and no longer surprised by it. He cleared his throat determinedly.
“Well, Raven was in this business for a number of years, so she certainly knows the ropes; and she’s a dragon slayer by nature as well as training. Rafferty—he’s the lawyer—married another of Hagen’s agents; Sarah does research primarily and doesn’t seem to care too much for field work. Zach—the security chief—married a redheaded spitfire who stumbled into an assignment he was on; Teddy looks more like the princess being rescued from the dragon, but she swings a pretty sharp sword herself. And Luc—the investigator—married a lady named Kyle, who is very beautiful, very bright, and very courageous; she wouldn’t wait to be rescued either.”
Elizabeth, fascinated, felt a distant throb of pain when she realized that each of those extraordinary men had apparently found women who matched them on every level and who were perfectly capable of going into battle with their men.
And she suddenly felt inadequate. Kelsey had seen and done so much; he was an epic dragon slayer in his own right and had been for fifteen years. What was she? She, who raised sisters and peaches, lived in a small town in the back of beyond, and when danger had threatened, had sat back b
iting her nails and waiting for someone else to act.
Swing a sword? She couldn’t even find one to lift!
“Excuse me,” she said suddenly, and escaped to the kitchen on the pretext of getting more coffee.
She stood in her safe, bright little kitchen, staring around at the familiar haven that was her tame little world.
The wildness inside her had always been controlled before now, escaping momentarily in brief winging periods, and settling quickly afterwards. Like the owner of some rare and fragile bird, she had opened the cage, let it out, and strictly controlled the limited flight, calling it quickly back before it could totally escape. But the passionate time spent with Kelsey had, she realized vaguely, changed something.
She couldn’t get the cage door shut this time, not completely. And the bird, with a new kind of freedom sampled, wanted more. Much more.
And a tiny, wise voice from deep in her mind—or her heart—whispered that her only means of truly understanding the man she loved lay not in him, but in herself. Kelsey flew by instinct, never returning to a cage but only to some more settled part of himself, and if she were to ever fully perceive the man he was, she would have to learn to fly that way as well.
She wasn’t even sure that what had been caged and tethered for so long could take wing completely now in total freedom. She wasn’t entirely certain that she had not, after all, forgotten how to really fly.
But her love was stronger than her fear.
Elizabeth had barely disappeared into the kitchen when Kelsey and Derek heard a car in the drive.
Derek lifted a questioning brow, and Kelsey shrugged. “I don’t suppose it matters now,” he told his partner, replying to the question of Derek’s anonymity. “Mallory will have to know who I am, so he might as well meet you. We need his cooperation too much to waste time with games.”
“Okay by me,” Derek murmured.
Kelsey went to the front door, which was standing open, and held the screen door back as Blaine Mallory stepped up onto the porch. Keeping his voice cool and unthreatening, Kelsey said, “Good morning. Would you come in?”
